[Spad]

Mariowar, you write as though you believe iPods are powered by a couple of AAA alkalines. Relax! They last a long, long time and are relatively easy to replace.

Screws in an iPod? Humpff!

 

[riodelin]

So Spad, will you test one of your pods?

 

[mariowar]

Spad, it's just that I've had horrible experiences with rechargeable batteries after the first year, that's all.

 

[riodelin]

Are you okay Mariowar? You seem a little stressed...is your pod okay? This is just as good as an "official iPod" forrum to talk about it since it is a portable device. And if you have had problems we'd be interested to know about it...

 

[mariowar]

I am fine and so happy with my little puppie, I just want it to last for a loooooong time, that's it.

I charged it for 3 hours, I listen today about two entire cds and the battery level is in 2 out of 4......

 

[Spad]

Quote:

Originally posted by mariowar I am fine and so happy with my little puppie, I just want it to last for a loooooong time, that's it. I charged it for 3 hours, I listen today about two entire cds and the battery level is in 2 out of 4......

Whoaaa! Was the iPod fully charged at the beginning? As you likely know, when it's fully charged the battery animation stops.

Also, the battery indicator will vary because it's based on a short term average. For example, if you've been using the iPod for a couple of hours and then do several disk accesses while looking for songs, the indicator will show a precipitous drop. Give it a minute or two and you will find it goes back to a more accurate indication.

If you think you actually have a problem give us some particulars such as the total accumulated playing time and what headphones you were using. Also what model iPod and its age.

Oh, and about this not being an iPod forum: You are much more likely to find informed opinions on Head-Fi than on any dedicated iPod site I've seen.

 

[mariowar]

Spad, I have the new 15 gigas Ipod. Well to tell you the truth I did not know that the battery symbols would stop.....I just unplugged it after about 4 hours.....
I'm using a Sony MDR EX71 nude 16 ohms. I know the amp is 30 ohms, does it have any implications related to longer or shorter playback?
You are right I see that sometimes the third pin reappears....strange isn't it? I know that the indicator is not very accurate though.

 

[Spad]

Quote:

Originally posted by mariowar Spad, I have the new 15 gigas Ipod. Well to tell you the truth I did not know that the battery symbols would stop.....I just unplugged it after about 4 hours..... I'm using a Sony MDR EX71 nude 16 ohms. I know the amp is 30 ohms, does it have any implications related to longer or shorter playback? You are right I see that sometimes the third pin reappears....strange isn't it? I know that the indicator is not very accurate though.

Four hours should be enough to fully charge it unless the line out was in use.

Your phones are easily driven, so you should be able to get the rated time of approximately eight hours from the battery. Apple has a history of being fairly conservative with the iPod's battery rating. The prior generations are rated at ten hours, but an actual twelve is reportedly not uncommon. I've never totally depleted one, so I can't vouch for that.

I think you may mean that the iPod's output is 30mw. This doesn't impact the play time, but the amount of power actually consumed does.

You may have noticed that the line out is quite loud. I haven't tested it, but I would surmise that the battery life could be reduced depending on the load and, of course, whether or not the dock was plugged in.

 

[mariowar]

Spad I was talking about the output's impedance, according to the specs is 30 Ohms, that's why I was asking if having a 16 ohms headphones would affect the battery life. I know they are supposed to play louder.

 

[RunsWithScissors]

Bit rate and disc access have the greatest impact on battery life, much more so than volume levels or headphone impedance/sensitivity.

Just as an example, if you fill your iPod with 128 kbs CBR (constant bit rate) MP3 files (yeeeccchhh - just an example!) and put it on repeat and play it until the battery depletes you should find that it will last longer than if you repeat this test using higher bit rate encoding such as 320 kbs CBR or even filling it with uncompressed WAV files (around 1400 kbs).

It simply takes more processing power to decode higher bit rates than it does to decode lower bit rates.

Continuously accessing the disc also requires the iPod to spin up the hard drive more often. Typically, the cache will fill and be accessed rather than spinning the hard drive unless you shuffle a lot or manually choose songs to play one after another causing the iPod to constantly access its hard drive to find the songs.

Take these things into consideration when making battery life tests and when comparing your batterly life to another iPod user.

Hope that helps.

BTW - I personally use EAC to rip my CDs and then encode them using LAME 3.90.2 and -alt-preset standard or -alt-preset extreme for very good quality MP3s using variable bit rate encoding. The key step in this process is in the digital audio extraction from your disc. If you introduce errors in your extraction process, no encoding or encoder is going to improve your sound quality after the fact - garbage in -> garbage out.
<< don't steal music >>

 

[Spad]

Yep, as discussed previously, the biggest drain is drive access, followed by frequent backlight use.

RunsWithScissors, I've never considered the impact of differing bit rates. Are you sure this is much of a factor?

There must be a story behind "RunsWithScissors." Care to share?

 

[mariowar]

I read somewhere else, can't remember where, that listening to wav files would drain the Ipod's battery faster, but I did not know that the mp3 bit rate would affect it too......

 

[jaskin]

By drive access do you mean adding, editing and deleting songs on your computer with an unpowered firewire source? I find that my IPod's battery runs out of juice really fast while I'm adding music.

 

[mariowar]

Jaskin, I observed the same thing, I don't know it could be that when the Ipod is adding music that fast, the HD spins at higher speed and consume the battery.

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Originally posted by mariowar By the way, the TAP or replacement plan is not free, you have to pay 40 bucks, and this give you the right to excange your IPOD, ONCE not twice.

They raised the price to $59.99 a while back.




Quote:

Originally posted by RunsWithScissors It simply takes more processing power to decode higher bit rates than it does to decode lower bit rates.

It's not that it takes more processing power to decode higher bitrates. It's that higher-bitrate files are generally bigger than lower-bitrate files. The iPod saves battery life by caching songs into RAM. The bigger the music files, the fewer songs can be cached to RAM, the more the hard drive has to spin up, the shorter your battery life.



Quote:

Originally posted by mariowar I read somewhere else, can't remember where, that listening to wav files would drain the Ipod's battery faster, but I did not know that the mp3 bit rate would affect it too

Listening to WAV/AIFF files is the fastest way to drain your battery, for the reason explained above -- only about 1/2 a song can fit into the 32MB buffer, whereas with low-bitrate MP3s, 8-10 (or more) songs can be cached.